


Hostage to Memory on the Wine-Dark Sea

by Amand_r



Category: Highlander: The Series, The Odyssey - Homer
Genre: Alternate History, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:28:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9108526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: When broaching the subject of the wine-dark sea, Methos is always on hand to make an alcoholism joke.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lferion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/gifts).



"Life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory." (Leonard Nimoy's final tweet)

 

When broaching the subject of the wine-dark sea, Methos is always on hand to make an alcoholism joke. Homer was a notorious drunkard, he says, always ready to spit a new verse for a cup of something that would get him wasted enough to forget that his eyesight was failing and he had to stumble around every morning to get his bearings, not least in part because he was often drunk from the night before.

But that’s not very accurate, really. What Methos wants you to know is that nothing is very accurate, not even what you are about to read.

Especially what you are about to read. 

It’s all true. In a sense. From a certain point of view. It really depends on how drunk you are. Or frightened you are. Or how guilty you are.

Or, in the case of just another soldier who survived the war and is now on a ship back to the Peloponnese with a bunch of battle hardened men, how reticent you are.

 

1\. 

There weren’t huts or rooms so much as there were natural hollows in the land that allowed them to rest from the elements. Not that the elements were particularly harsh to begin with—Methos had seen worse weather in Jiuzhou. But it was dark now and the crew had been so weary of the water. 

He crouched down and poked one of the men with a finger. The man mumbled something under his breath and rolled away to the side, but not before Methos glimpsed the drool coming from his mouth and the strange tint of his tongue. He sat further back on his haunches and glanced behind him.

“Lotus,” he said to Odysseus. “Or something like it.”

“What does it mean?” Odysseus bent over to peer at the man over Methos’s shoulder. 

“It means that they aren’t leaving unless we carry them.” Methos stood and wiped his hands on his shirt. They weren’t particularly dirty from touching the man, but something about the drugs in his system made Methos paranoid and worried. The last thing he needed was to be dosed with this stuff. One taste and he’d be here for the next fifty years, or until someone more quick witted than he came to take his head. 

Would that be so bad, though, really? He had gone looking for answers in Tibet and not found them. A hundred years of running from his brothers and then another hundred looking for it in the bottom of a brass bowl in the mountains. It had been calming, sure, but as soon as he had set out for himself, every uncertainty and guilt had reemerged as if it had been waiting for him at the gates of the monastery. 

And maybe it had. Could guilt turn into a spirit? Could it simply wait outside of where it couldn’t go, hanging forever about patiently until its target left the protection of the temple? He knew the answers that everyone else would give to that question, but he didn’t know what _his_ answer was. 

_”Oh really?”_ breathed a voice in his ear. Oh goddammit.

The man below him rolled so close to the campfire that Methos had made earlier that his hand flopped onto the hot coals. He didn’t pull it away.

Well, that was answer enough.

“We can’t just leave them here,” Odysseus said, running his hands through his hair. 

"Oh really?" Methos asked, making sure that his reply was a mockery of the one he'd just had pushed into his skull by an otherworldly force. He was rewarded with a disappointed look. Not mad, just disappointed. 

"Grab an arm," Odysseus told him.

 

2\. 

Methos huddled in the back of the cave and wondered what a quickening would look like if his head was merely bitten off by a cyclops. It was probably the same—Kronos and Silas had once crushed an immortal's head under a boulder, and it had pretty much been a normal quickening after the neck had deteriorated enough to separate the shoulders from the head, but it had taken a week, and some very determined vultures.

"I think we can get out of this," Odysseus said to him under his breath. Polyphemus was using Nestor's leg as a toothpick, but Odysseus' face was in a grin that boded nothing good. In fact, it reminded Methos of another insane person he knew with a scar over his eye. "How much wine do you have?"

"Not enough," Methos told him. "Not nearly enough, really."

"What do you have in mind?" Perimedes asked. "Because I have to be honest—I don't fancy being eaten."

Odysseus began to collect all of the wineskins they had, which was a fairly large number. It was just good manners to have that much wine on hand, Methos figured. 

Though when he offered all of them to Polyphemus, Methos was a little miffed.

"I am being punished for something," Methos said to no one in particular as he slapped the sheep skin over his back. He could feel the wet bloodiness of it seep through his armor and tunic. "Definitely being punished for something.

"Crawl faster," Perimedes mumbled, and then let out a screechingly good imitation of a bleat when Polyphemus's hand skimmed over their backs. His eye was drooling blood and the stick was still embedded in the gelatinous mess of it. Methos tried to feel badly about it, but he stepped in a mess of Autolycus' intestines on his way out the open cave door.

After they boarded the ship, Odysseus pulled his skirt up and shook his crotch at the blinded cyclops, a move that was a little overboard, no pun intended. "I am Odysseus!" he called out. "I am the man that beat you!"

Methos smacked his face with his hand. _Nothing_ good could come of this.

 

3\. 

"Do they know what you are?" Aeolus asked once they were alone at the fire. Everyone else was asleep, but Methos was having trouble sleeping. He'd stolen a little bit of the lotus flower from the islanders earlier, but he was loathe to use it, or even let some of the men know that he had it. Some of them still talked fondly of their time there, in a way that Methos wasn't sure was healthy. 

It was going to take them years to get home, if they ever did. Methos wasn't even sure that calling it home was something he should do. It certainly wasn't _his_ home, but it was as good a place as any to set out for, he had figured when Odysseus had been taking on men to replace the soldiers he had lost in the war. Free passage back to the Peloponnese had been a fair reward for working a ship, something he could do in his sleep, really. 

Not on lotus blossoms, though.

"They don't know, and I'm not keen on telling them," Methos said, cleaning his nails with his knife. He put the heels of his feet to the warm stones around the fire. The cold sea had made them forever chilled, and he was grateful for the heat, even if it meant possible burns. They'd just heal, anyway.

"You picked a poor crew to sign on to," Aeolus said. "Poseidon has a major hard-on for your boss."

Methos glanced to Odysseus' sleeping form, his broad back turned to them, covered in a sleeping fur. "Yeah, might have backed the wrong horse here," he mumbled. "I was driven to it."

She laughed, and Aeolus must have heard it, because he rolled his eyes. Methos added a log to the fire and cast about for a wine skin. Anything to make him drowsy. Not that Aeolus wasn't good company, better conversation then any number of men he worked with on the ship, but he was tired and would prefer to not have to listen to a goddess in his head.

"Mortals are poor companions," Aeolus told him, stabbing the fire with his walking staff. It was some kind of metal, and Methos wasn't sure that he even needed it.

"I've had my fill of Immortals," Methos replied, and then shrugged. "No offense," he added.

Aeolus smirked. "None taken." He reached towards the bag beside him and slapped the leather belly. "I have something that might make your trip faster, though. I hear spring in Ithaca is beautiful."

"Never been there," Methos said, pulling the fur tighter around his shoulders. "Looking forward to it."

A month later, Methos watched the leather bag fly off into the horizon as the men shouted around him and Odysseus bludgeoned Elepnor in the face. The East and Southern winds had already started to make the ship veer off course. 

Polites sat down to the floor of the deck with a dejected thud. "It will take forever to get home," he mourned, and his voice had a resonant tone that reminded Methos of the brass bowls of Tibet, the ones the monks used just after announcing a new koan to meditate upon.

"Explain to me again how this is a learning experience for me," he whispered into the wind.

 

4\. 

Methos watched the rocks slam into the ships from the deck of Odysseus' craft.

"Holy shit."

 

5\. 

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Methos said as they scaled the cliff face. 

Hermes glared at Methos. "I don't think you have much of a choice," He spat. "It wasn't my idea to be here, if you must know."

Odysseus readjusted his handholds on the rocks and reached out for the plant growing out from the cracks in the stone. "This is moly," he said, his face skeptical. Methos didn't know much about the plants of this region, but he did know that mortals weren't allowed to pull it. To do so meant certain death. Hermes could pull it out for them, but He didn't move.

Hermes rolled His eyes. "Of course it is. What did you think it would be? Candy floss?"

"What's candy floss?" Methos asked, searching for the next rock to grab in the climb to the top, towards Circe's tower.

Hermes crossed His arms smugly and drifted higher on His winged sandals. Bloody useful, those shoes. Methos had half a mind to steal them someday if that wouldn't end with being chained to a rock and tickled to death for all eternity. "Just wait a few thousand years."

The concept of surviving for a few thousand years was staggering, Methos thought. 

"If you eat it, you'll be immune to Circe's tender ministrations," Hermes said. "Off you go. Pip pip." He gestured to Methos. "But let him pull it from the rock."

Odysseus pulled his hand away from the plant. "Won't it kill him?"

Methos made a face at Hermes, who ignored it. "Not for long," He replied. "Time is wasting, Homeros."

Methos shook his head and stared at the plant. "All right, but whatever happens, just…just oh fuck it." He grabbed at the stems of the white flowers and yanked, coming away with a few stalks and handing them to Odysseus. "So. That was anticlima—"

The jolt hit his chest so quickly that he lost his footing and tumbled back down to the bottom of the cliff face. By the time he woke, it was dark, and Odysseus was nowhere in sight.

A few hundred years roaming the countryside and pillaging was starting to look better and better, he figured, as he thought about how he used to have pretty women to wash him, and haunches of meat to eat. He was almost to Circe's gates when he had come up with a good excuse for not dying—just blame a god. Athena was as good as any of them, and Odysseus would believe him. Athena had already had enough influence in this trip. 

"What took you so long?" Odysseus asked him when he made his way into the great hall, loaded with animals and plates of food. "Don't eat the food."

A pig ran by, brushing Methos' legs and almost knocking him into a standing brazier. "Where are the men?"

Odysseus shrugged and waved at hand at the room. All Methos could see were animals, most of them pigs, actually, not really the kind of thing one wanted running about the house, shitting everywhere and–

_"Oh."_

"I know right?" Odysseus drained his goblet and shrugged. "I'm working on it." A human servant refilled his goblet and offered one to Methos. Probably best not. 

_"Odysseus?"_ came a lilting female voice from behind a curtain off to the side of the room. _"I'm waiting. Come back to bed."_

Odysseus smiled, shifted his tunic and turned, leaving Methos in the hall with a herd of man-swine. "Once more into the breach," he called over his shoulder.

Methos sat on a chair to wait. A pig shit on his foot. This couldn't be over soon enough.

 

6\. 

The ship was moored at the cliff, right by the opening to the cave, as safe a place as any this close to the Underworld. Odysseus had warned them not to wander off, and no one really felt inclined to disobey, for the first time on this fucking journey, Methos mused. So many of their issues could have been avoided if people listened to the chain of command, he figured. Though Odysseus was arguably their worst enemy, really, as brilliant as he was.

Methos had served under other brilliant idiots, he figured. 

The goat was dead, blood all over the altar, and the smell of roasting meat was strong. Methos glanced down at the hard tack in his hand and wished for better days. 

"You wish for a great many things," She said. He jumped and dropped his tack onto the deck. Polites cocked his head.

"Nerves," he offered, and the man nodded and resumed his continuous stare at the mouth of the Underworld, waiting for Odysseus to reappear.

Methos retrieved his meal and bit into it. _You don't need to do that,_ he thought to himself. There was no point in talking aloud. She would know. She always knew. It was uncanny. And not a little disquieting.

Methos had never been a religious man, and he probably still wasn't, if he stopped to think about it. He'd seen men walk on fire, men drink poison and live. He'd seen a ghost ship of the dead rise from the sea. There were too many things in this world that weren't tangible but affected the universe—mountains that exploded in rivers of liquid fire, waves taller than the highest city wall that crashed and swallowed whole towns, bolts of white heat from the sky that cleaved trees in two and cooked living things on the inside. He didn't know if he had explanations for all of them, but nothing surprised him anymore, not since he'd been killed with a rock to the head and sat back up without a mark on him, a thousand years ago.

A thousand years. Perhaps. Civilizations and civilizations, so perhaps a thousand years.

"You'll find I rarely _need_ to do anything, She replied. "But point taken." There was a rustle of some canvas tarps from the supplies next to him, and She was there, all comely and...overdressed. "Just because only you can see and hear me doesn't mean that I have to coddle your imagination," She purred.

Fair cop.

"It's taken you much longer than I thought for you to get this far," She mused, toying with a bunch of fishing net. "I admit that I hadn't anticipated how angry my Odysseus would make my uncle."

Methos had no words for that. He shoveled more tack into his mouth. The rocking of the boat forced his balance to shift back and forth. It was astounding that after all these years he could still feel it at all.

"When I agreed to do this for you," he mumbled, hoping none of the men would see him talking to a bunch of crates. "I didn't think it would be so...." He was at a loss.

"Fraught?" She suggested. "Ah. Nor I."

"I thought you knew these things, what with the wisdom and all," he said.

She rolled Her eyes. "Is that what you think wisdom means? It was a silly thing for you to pray for if you didn't even know what it means." She flicked a bit of dried seaweed at him, and it fell into the front gap of his tunic. "Prescience? I thought it meant learning." Her eyes sparkled. "I offered you wisdom, not prophecy."

Methos had nothing to say again, so he switched trails. "You haven't ever said what you want in exchange for my presence on this voyage," he said.

In retrospect, it was alarming, actually, that he hadn't asked Her that before. At the very beginning. It should have been the first thing out of his mouth when She'd stopped him at the gangplank of Menelaus' ship, pointed to Odysseus', and said, 'Go on that one instead.'

It was foolish. _Unwise,_ one might have said.

"I know," She said, laughing. "I bet that stings." The boat rocked with a little more force, and he wondered if it was because of Her, or just the wind. Or something slithering under the boat. Nothing about this trip would surprise him ever again, not even if a big tentacle came up from the depths, wrapped around the boat, and snapped it in two.

"It's enough that you're here for now," She said with finality.

Polites handed him a wineskin and he accepted it gratefully. He almost offered it to Her before he realized how strange that would look; sitting before the gates of Hell was no place to appear suspicious. When he looked back at Her, the shadows covered Her face, shadows not cast by any torch. 

“What have you learned?” Athena asked him, Her face hidden in godhood. It was hard to think that at one point She might have burst from her father fully grown. People didn’t do these sorts of things, and it would be eons before another person will think of the concept of being born into adulthood. 

"Not to trust men who wink when they say, 'Trust me'," he offered.

Athena nodded. "Good one."

"Secrets are best kept if no one knows they're there in the first place."

"Even better."

Methos paused. "Beware Greeks bearing gifts."

Athena clapped Her hands. "I may have to steal that one."

"By all means."

She was silent, and he wasn't sure what to add, so he took a page from his own book and said nothing further. 

He hadn't meant to get involved in the Trojan conflict, but as always, there had been a woman, a queen, actually. She'd rescued him from a river, and he'd decided to let his dick take a rear seat for a few years and let a woman steer his course for a while. It was what he deserved, he figured, when meditation and prayer and penance hadn't calmed the raging agitation in him.

But Achilles had slain her on the battlefield, and he'd slipped into the Grecian ranks, half from fear, half from anger, a desire for revenge. He'd thought to kill Achilles, but Paris had beaten him to it. Just as well. In the last days of Troy, he'd caught a glimpse of Cassandra inside the walls, and that had been the last thing he'd wanted to confront. Not yet. Perhaps never.

Now, here he was, letting another woman steer his course. _Zero for two so far, ladies._

"I suppose wisdom comes with age and memory," he mused. "I already have so much of the first, though."

Athena sighed. "When your soul reflects the image of your eyes, then you can begin to see."

"This is why I left Tibet," he told Her.

"I thought that was the butter tea."

"That too."

There was a clamor from the bow of the ship, and he glanced up to see Odysseus emerging from the entrance to the Underworld. When he looked back to Athena, She was gone.

 

7.

Methos stared at Scylla's long tentacles whipping down towards the ship.

"Holy fucking shit."

 

8\. 

They'd been waiting for Odysseus for three hours. 

Eurylochus slammed his hand down on the deck rail and reached over to the rigging for one of the long knives lashed there. 

"Fuck this. I need a steak."

 

9\. 

"How long have I been down here?" Methos asked, coughing up sea water. It was black with old algae. Wine-dark, almost.

Athena sat back against an outcropping of rocks that studded the beach and stared out to sea. "Seven years."

 _"Seven years?"_ he spluttered, but the speed of his speech caught on his rusty tongue. He coughed up more brackish water and what looked suspiciously like a chunk of lung.

"I'd thought you lost," Athena offered, the closest She'd ever come to an apology, as if She didn't do it often. She probably didn't. "Several things have been found recently."

"Well, at least I can't remember," he said, staring down at what few rags still clung to his body. Seven years buried in the remains of a ship at the bottom of the sea had prevented his head from being detached from his body, but not the appetites of fish and crabs with a taste for linen, apparently.

“You shan’t remember this, you know,” She told him. The sound of the waves almost covered Her voice, but they never did, because the sounds that issued from Her mouth could never be muted by the sounds of nature. Athena’s whispers registered in his chest like the vibrations of a war machine he had yet to see, but would, thousands of years from now, on the Somme. 

“There are already so many things I don’t remember anyway,” he said to Her, to Her face, though he could have said it in the middle of China under his breath into a sack of rice and She would have heard him, heard him like he could feel Her in his bones, this thing of War and Wisdom. He had forsaken the first and couldn’t find the latter. 

"What was the point of saving me anyway?" he asked bitterly. Already he was remembering, remembering things he had desperately prayed to forget.

"You wanted wisdom," She said, turning Her head to face him, and She wasn't a woman anymore, or a girl, but something so alien She might have well been carved from dreams and nightmares. Methos looked away, not wanting to feel the hotness of that gaze burn his eyes.

"You don't have to remember to be wise," Athena said. "You should know that."

He didn't. "Are you going to erase my mind?" he asked, a bit of panic wiggling in his chest. Or there could still be some sort of small fish trapped in his stomach, he figured. But was he nervous because of what She might do, or because he wanted Her to do it so desperately? 

Athena ignored him. It was Her way, he figured, the kind of thing you treat with a flippant wave of the hand, dismissively: Her Way. 

"You did well tying up Odysseus," She said finally. "At the island of the Sirens. I love him but he's reckless."

"Was reckless," Methos corrected. "I saw him pulled under."

Athena stared off into the sun, but Her mouth curved upwards in the kind of secret smile that wasn't secret because it existed in plain sight. 

"Oh no," he said.

 

10.

Ogygia was paradise island. Methos could see why anyone would linger here, especially after the previous decade of never-ending sailing and peril. It was better than Circe's palace, and he'd really rather liked that place. If not for Circe. She always gave him the sense that he was in danger at any given moment.

Of course Athena wouldn't come Herself. It would be way too easy for Her to actually appear to Odysseus and tell him what She wanted him to do would make so much sense, but no, We told Daddy, and Daddy told Hermes, and Hermes was telling Calypso that Odysseus had to go home, a deity's game of whispers.

Methos left Hermes in the middle of the argument and found Odysseus a ways away, standing at the top of one of Ogygia's many verdant cliffs overlooking the sea. He glanced at Methos before returning his squint to the sun coming down into the water. Methos remembered the first time he'd asked someone where the sun went when it descended into the earth. His mother had told him something about a goddess who kept the sun in a pocket under the earth, so that it could rest. He couldn't remember the name of the goddess anymore, or his mother's face, but he did recall that academically the incident had occurred.

"I thought you were dead," Odysseus said.

"I think I was for a while," Methos admitted, staring at the sun and trying not to—it was bad for the eyes, yet something else he academically remembered his mother telling him, but not how she said it. "I got better," he added.

Odysseus didn't seem very stunned by that. In fact, after a trip full of man-pigs, cyclops, bags of wind, holy cows, sea monsters and the underworld, that Methos might have come back from the dead was actually one of the lesser events of interest. 

"And now you serve Them," he remarked, not bothering to gesture to Hermes. Methos knew who he meant. 

"You can't stay here," Methos said, though he wasn't sure why Odysseus had to go anyway. Hermes was in a heated conversation with Calypso. She waved her hands in wide circles and then stabbed His chest with her finger, something Methos wasn't sure he'd ever be able to bring himself to do. Hermes was a god, after all. 

"What's the point of going home now?" Odysseus whispered, his gaze roamed over the sea, the impossible barrier. Methos wondered if he ever regretted his boasts, the ones that earned him the ire of the one god whose blessing would have been necessary to sail smoothly back to the one place he had wanted to be. It was no secret that Odysseus had been tricked into going to Troy. That he seemed to be taking his anger at that out on everyone in the universe was pretty evident to Methos, had been ever since Elepnor had been left to rot after drunkenly falling off a ladder, instead of buried with honor.

"I know you think about your wife," Methos said.

Odysseus smiled to himself, but didn't look at him. "Do you have a wife, Homeros?"

Methos thought about it. It was a fair question. "I did once. She died."

Odysseus nodded. "Did it kill you?"

A spiral of gulls collapsed in a whirlwind, riding the breezes out over the water. There was a jangle of bells as Calypso's jewelry shook with every angry gesture. The ocean roiled and flowed, and Methos found himself desperately hoping not to see any faces in the seafoam.

"It did, just a little," he admitted finally. 

Odysseus looked back behind him, to where Calypso and Hermes had reached some sort of détente. Neither one of them looked remotely happy. 

"All right then," Odysseus said, looking from Calypso then to the East, to where Ithaca must have been. "It's time to go home."

 

"So how are we going to be able to sail without drawing Poseidon's eye?" Methos asked the next day as he finished tying the final rope on their raft. It was a raft. A raft. Methos glared at Hermes, who just sat on a nearby rock and studied a glowing square he called a "tablet". When Methos asked him to help, he'd just said something about being called a "newfag" on "bee."

Why couldn't Athena have given them a boat? How hard was it to conjure up a boat? Or get someone to make one for Her? She had followers all over the goddamn peninsula who would have loved to have done anything, _anything_ for Her.

Odysseus glanced up from securing the last of their supplies and winked. "Trust me."

 

11.

As far as shipwrecks went, it hadn't been a bad one. Considering that the last one Methos had been in had resulted in a seven year stay it the bottom of the Ionian, he was fine with a few hours of sort of drowning, reviving long enough to get his bearings and make sure that Odysseus didn't die at all. Mortals only had the one life. 

It had been pretty good going, but all good things come to an end, and Poseidon had to catch up to them eventually. After all, it was his domain. Odysseus had hidden under camouflage for a long time, but eventually it had slipped, and his face had been reflected in the eyes of something, who knew, a fucking dolphin or something, and that had been that. Poseidon had been more than a little stropped that not only was Odysseus not dead, but was still trying to sail home. He had trashed their ship with all alacrity and was still pummeling the beach on which they had washed up. The largest piece of their ship that Methos had seen was about the size of his palm, so he figured he'd better just be grateful.

"Where are we?" Odysseus mumbled. He had hit his head off the rocks in the bay, and he was bleeding. Methos wasn't sure where they were—one stretch of beach looked pretty much like another, really. 

"You are on Scherie," a lilting voice said from behind them, and Methos rolled to one side to see the young woman approaching them. Her hands were full of clothing, and a few yards behind her a gaggle of girls hid their faces behind cloth and tittered. Methos glanced down at his tattered clothing. That was it. He was going to go naked for the rest of his life. What was the point in having clothing?

"I am Homeros of Thrace," he said, picking a location from the top of his head. "This is...Euclid...of...Thrace?"

Odysseus, still face down in the sand, raised one hand and saluted with two fingers.

"I know who you are," the woman said, gesturing to her maids to approach. "She came to me in a dream and told me to come this morning."

"Oh did She now," Methos mumbled, trying to cover his naughty bits from the girls and help Odysseus to stand at the same time. 

"I am Nausicaä," the woman said, holding out her hand to them. "Welcome."

They were almost to the doors of Arete and Alcinous's home when Nausicaä laid a hand on his arm. Methos let go of Odysseus, who was escorted into the courtyard, the large open atrium littered with people and chickens and hay bales. Beyond that, Methos could see the braziers that studded the edges of the entrance to the dining hall. With any luck they'd be given something to eat before being shoved into a bathing tub. Methos knew he must have stunk, but he wasn't keen on getting back into any measure of water any time soon. 

He turned to look at her, but he wasn't really paying attention, so when her mouth covered his, and he tasted honey and ozone, and her tongue darted past his lips, he was not a little startled. One of her hands curved around his upper arm, and the other grasped his opposite hand.

"That was well done," She murmured into his ear. The girls passed them, not looking at them strangely at all, so She must have been altering the appearance of their actions as they stood here. The sun burst through the clouds and stabbed the courtyard. Odysseus let a woman wipe at the blood on his face and bind his head with a clean cloth. His eyes darted to Methos, but didn't linger. Already forgotten.

"Am I done now?" Methos asked Her, and Athena's eyes shined from Nausicaä's, grey with the wisdom that came from knowing that nothing was ever black and white, wisdom that Methos was sure he understood now.

"Yes," She said, "but for one more thing."

Methos's heart sank. What else could She want? What more could he do? "Holy gods, woman, what else can there be left?"

Odysseus disappeared into the dining hall of the Phaecians, a goblet of wine already pressed into his calloused hand, when Nausicaä's thin one covered Methos eyes, and for a second he couldn't see. Behind his closed lids was the red tinted movement of the wine-dark sea. 

"And now, you sing, my sweet muse."

END

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Forgive me for skipping out on the Laestrygonians. And the Sirens. And Scylla and Charybdis. And the Cattle of Helios. Look man, I got Nausicaa in there.


End file.
